Cusco, let’s not go to Machu Picchu!

Yes, we did that, we intentionnaly missed the world famous Inca Ruins.

It comes as quite a shock to most people we meet when we tell them we didn’t go to Machu Picchu. Isn’t it what all Peru and Cusco are all about? We had seen thousands of picture of it already and felt like seeing it with all these people walking around and over it wouldn’t be that special, just plain expensive. Soooo tough decision but we decided not to go. I know…

Instead we walked around the city for a day, wandering in its tiny beautiful paved streets and while we were not even looking for it, we spotted THE place, a motorbike rental place. So what right? One thing you should know about Amaury is that he is absolutely crazy about motorbikes. To give you an idea of how far this goes, his phone’s screensaver is a photo of his motorbike and « she » will probably be the first thing he’ll run to when we come back home. Now you get it. And it had been almost 4 months since he had ridden a bike. So you can imagine how emotional he got. Soo we rented the bike for the next day and drove the wonderful roads around Cusco, feeling more free than ever.

We headed to the famous Pisac market that Lele, co founder of the great Siblings Army brand (check out our article here) had recommended to us, which is worth it both for its local crafts and for its location in a beautiful village in the middle of the mountains. One of the sellers on the market then told us about a dirt track that would take us up north, which was exactly where we were headed so we took it to reach a pretty nice salar near the town of Maras and some other ruins we ended up never finding. As the sun was starting to set and the temperature to cool down way to rapidly in my opinion we took the road back to Cusco, where we kissed our bike goodbye and the bus that would take us to La Paz hello!

So yes, we didn’t see the Machu Picchu, but didn’t cross lots of people on our day out with the motorbike, and that felt pretty cool.